Perhaps it's just in my imagination but I always thought relations between England & France were a shade less that tickety-boo & have always thought that what would amuse French people of all walks of life, every single day of the year would be to have Les Rosbifs "dun up like a kippa".
Surely if they get concessions on the dates of the final stages of the HC they will take yet another opportunity to leave the "Mother Country" isolated on it's Brennan without a single friend in NH rugby, save perhaps Spain if they cede Gibraltar to the oily ones amongst whom I currently reside.
One thing is certain, my hatred of the English collective, rather than decent individuals of which clearly there is no shortage, will find new depths.
It always staggers me that notwithstanding the English having a high old opinion of themselves & are endlessly popular amongst themselves & have seemingly no end of clarity on what they feel to be their birthright - subservience of ALL other countries - they actually struggle to realise why other non-English people appear to universally hate their guts.
Take the French for example. They have a less than hidden dislike for English speakers which softens almost instantly when you protest your innocence of the charge of being English. I've heard desultory moans from actual English people along the lines of "why did we bother liberating them? Ungrateful frogs", I have occasionally suggested helpfully that they regard the Yanks as their liberators, of course mainly lead by La Resistance, but they don't even like them.
One thing is sure, they will use their greater financial clout in whatever way best suits their own purpose rather than the greater good. Last night, having dined with a family of English friends down the coast a bit I returned more or less sober & not in the arms of Bacchus as I was driving & was listening to that wonderful octagenarian Noam Chomsky.
Addressing the cadet force at West Point and he ended suggesting that current international affairs demonstrated what Thucydides considered reflected in the events of the Pelyponnesian War a few hundred years BC. "The powerful will do as they will, the weak will suffer what they must" reflecting that if there is an imbalance of strength, "right" does not enter the equation, "right" only exists when two roughly equal parties disagree.
Safe to say that "right" will not be a consideration for the Inglaisies in this imbalance of financial power.
Of Noam's quotes, the following is a belter: The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.